Rick Rubin: evaluation

Transcript context

…Last two questions. First, your new book—again, the title is The Creative Act: A Way of Being, but what does that book mean to you? Final question, in music, what is it you might be likely to do next? The book is an attempt to share the type of thinking that happens in the recording studio with the artists that I get to work with. I’m hoping that it can open someone’s mind to possibilities of a different way of doing things. I don’t know that it’s for everybody, but if it’s for you, I hope that you know about it. I had an interesting experience. I read two reviews of the book in two big financial newspapers. One of them absolutely hated the book. I read that review first, and it just made me laugh because it’s like they didn’t feel the book at all. Then, I read the second one and they loved the book. It was so interesting to see these two opposing points of view about the same piece of work. It made me feel good because one of the things I talk about in the book is that the best work divides the audience, and that you want to make work that some people love and some people hate. If everybody thinks it’s just okay or pretty good, it’s not so interesting. If everybody likes something you make, you probably didn’t go far enough. You want it to be extreme enough that the people who love it really love it, and that everyone else just doesn’t—it’s too much. I got to have that experience today, and it was a great experience. I hope that the reader of the second piece who really felt it—I hope that people who read like him are able to have the experience of reading the book. I don’t want anyone to read it who doesn’t want to read it or isn’t into this kind of thing What you will do next—I don’t mean another book, but musically, is there something slated that you can talk about?…

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